The Universal Peace Congresses were international meetings to promote peace that took place in different European capitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The congresses established liberal pacifism as a distinct system of thought in European politics and a serious force in international relations for several decades. Religious peace groups, labor organizations, government officials, authors, and other notables attended these congresses, whose attendance grew until World War I, when they were discontinued because of conflicting loyalties among the delegates. The first notable peace congress was held in London ...

Äldre Västgötalagen (Old Västergötland law) is the oldest legal text written in Old Swedish in Latin script and the oldest of Sweden’s medieval provincial laws. The law was formulated around 1220 and was used in Västergötland in western Sweden. This manuscript fragment dates to about 1240. It contains the oldest record of the law and, along with another manuscript in the holdings of the National Library of Sweden dating from the early 1290s, is the only source for the law. The two leaves come from the same manuscript and ...

Saint Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden (circa 1303–73) was known for her revelations, which she reportedly wrote down in Swedish and then had translated into Latin by one of her two confessors. When she took ill, she changed her usual practice, and dictated her revelations to one of the confessors, who then translated them into Latin. In the manuscript collection at the National Library of Sweden is preserved a document that offers a unique insight into the origins of Birgitta’s revelations. It consists of three leaves of paper ...

August Strindberg (1849–1912) was one of Sweden’s most important writers. From the 1870s until his death, he was a dominant figure in Swedish literary circles. Internationally, he is known for his plays. Strindberg grew up in Stockholm and studied at Uppsala University. From 1874 to 1882 he worked at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It was there that he acquired much of his considerable knowledge of cultural history and literature. His breakthrough came in 1879 with publication of the novel The Red Room. Strindberg traveled extensively ...

Luffar-Petter (Peter the tramp), a silent film made in Sweden in 1922, was the first film in which the Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo (1905–90) appeared. Still known by her original name of Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, Garbo was at the time a simple, unknown actress still learning her craft. This short comedy was the starting point from which Garbo was launched on a path to major roles in Swedish and Hollywood films and to stardom. Presented here is the film poster for Luffar-Petter, which was created some seven years after ...

Almost since the invention of the first camera, photographic techniques have been used both to capture and to alter reality. This is especially true of portrait photography, which has successfully transformed real persons into myth and legend with the help of carefully construed images. Henry B. Goodwin, the Bavarian landscape painter whose original name was Heinrich Buergel, was a scholar of Old Icelandic and one of the pioneers of portrait photography in Scandinavia. Goodwin adopted a new homeland and new name and contributed to the visual image of contemporary Swedes ...

In 1683 Swedish cartographer Carl Gripenhielm (1655–94) was appointed the first director of the Swedish Land Survey. Much of Sweden was at that time sparsely populated and not well surveyed. Gripenhielm undertook an ambitious program of mapping and surveying, extending over several decades. The completion of detailed maps of Sweden’s agricultural land, forests, and surrounding seas coincided with the country’s economic development and its rise to great power status under the rule of strong monarchs and a centralized state bureaucracy. By the 18th century, Sweden’s cartographical ...

This 1852 single-sheet satirical print depicting “the old people mill” is part of a collection of 850 such broadsides printed in various Swedish cities and now preserved in the National Library of Sweden. These prints were often pasted inside the lids of chests in which people stored their belongings. The print on the left and the accompanying verses below are devoted to “the mill for old men," those on the right to “the mill for old women,” magical mills from which they return young and beautiful. In the era before ...

The Stockholm Olympiad of 1912 marked the transition of the modern Olympic Games from what had been a modest-sized athletic competition into a global media event. The preparation and build-up for the games, the venues built especially for them, and media exposure all began to overshadow the fabric of the athletic competitions themselves. This media event emphasized both global and national dimensions and was meticulously conceived by the organizers. Recognizing that technology was evolving quickly and that visual images crossed borders unhindered, the committee mounted an innovative international media campaign ...

This watercolor by the Swedish artist and draftsman Carl Gustaf Gillberg (1774–1855) depicts the fighting at Ratan on August 20, 1809 between the armies of Sweden and Russia. Contemporaneously with the Napoleonic wars, at the beginning of the 19th century Sweden and Russia fought what became known as the Finnish War, which had the effect of radically altering the political topography of the Baltic. Sweden’s defeat put an end to its domination in the region. Finland, previously a province of Sweden, became a grand duchy under the rule ...

This engraving shows the fire of 1697 that destroyed Tre Kronor, the 16th–17th century royal castle that once housed the ruling monarchs of Sweden. As Sweden rose to become a great power, the dichotomy between its wealth, power, and ties to Europe and the spartan northern wooden structure that housed its rulers became ever more apparent. This was never more so than under Queen Christina (reigned 1632–54), who followed developments on the continent and succeeded in intellectually annexing Sweden to an international learned community. Scholars who made their ...

Äldre Västgötalagen (Old Västergötland law) is the oldest legal text written in Old Swedish in Latin script and the oldest of Sweden’s medieval provincial laws. The law was formulated around 1220 and was used in Västergötland in western Sweden. Manuscript B 59 in the National Library of Sweden is the only complete copy of the law and is Sweden’s oldest book. The manuscript is a composite of 77 leaves, consisting of three parts bound together. It was written mainly by four scribes and dates to the beginning of ...

This photograph by Henry B. Goodwin depicts the Swedish author Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf (1858–1940), the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Goodwin was born the son of a Bavarian landscape painter and originally named Heinrich Buergel. He was a scholar of Old Icelandic and one of the pioneers of portrait photography in Scandinavia. He adopted a new homeland and a new name and contributed to the visual image of contemporary Swedes by becoming the most-renowned society photographer in Sweden in his era. An advocate of ...

This portrait of Alessandro Guerra (1790−1862) was produced by Vincent (also called Vincenzo) Gozzini and engraved by Giovanni Paolo Lasinio around 1830, the period in which Guerra (dubbed "Il furioso" for his daring style of acrobatics on horseback) was at the height of his performing success. The rhymed couplet at the bottom of the illustration refers to Guerra’s skill and his worldwide fame. A direct rival of the famous English equestrian acrobat Andrew Ducrow, Guerra was one of the most significant artists of the circus in the early ...

This map of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden is by the French cartographer Guillaume de L'Isle (1675-1726). The son of a geographer, de L’Isle began working in the field of cartography at a young age. In addition to learning from his father, he studied mathematics and astronomy with the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712). This training led de L’Isle to produce scientifically accurate maps. In 1718, he became the official geographer to the king. De L’Isle’s maps continued the trend in French ...

This map shows the Kingdom of Sweden as it appeared at the end of the 18th century. At the time, the kingdom included present-day Sweden as well as Finland, which, however, was lost to the Russian Empire in 1809. The map is the work of Samuel Gustaf Hermelin (1744-1820), a Swedish industrialist and diplomat who also practiced cartography. Hermelin studied mining at the University of Uppsala before traveling to the United States to study industrialization. While in North America, he was instrumental in establishing diplomatic relations between Sweden and the ...

The Revelations of Saint Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden (circa 1303–73) is one of the most important and influential works of Swedish medieval literature. According to contemporary sources, Birgitta received her revelations in the form of visions, beginning in the 1340s and continuing until close to her death. Although her revelations related mostly to spiritual matters, they included some messages of a practical and political character, one of which was the command to found a new religious order, which resulted in the establishment of the Order of the Most ...

Ockultadagboken (The occult diary) is a diary kept intermittently for 12 years by the Swedish author and playwright August Strindberg (1849−1912). It comprises more than 300 folio leaves, from the first written in Paris in 1896 to the last entry from Stockholm in 1908. When Strindberg began the diary, his intention was to record characters and incidents that, although seemingly trivial, appeared to him to be significant, as well as strange coincidences, dreams, clairvoyant experiences, Bible quotations, and extracts from other books, usually without any comment. He gradually ...

Selma Lagerlöf (1858−1940) was one of Sweden’s most important writers. In 1909 she became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1914 the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy. Her writings were placed in a local setting, but she used them and her national and international prominence to champion much larger issues, including women's suffrage in Sweden and international peace initiatives. In 1890 Lagerlöf entered a novel competition, sponsored by the magazine Idun, by submitting five chapters of Gösta Berlings ...

The Revelations of Saint Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden (circa 1303–73) is one of the most important and influential works of Swedish medieval literature. According to contemporary sources, Birgitta received her revelations in the form of visions, beginning in the 1340s and continuing until close to her death. Although her revelations related mostly to spiritual matters, they included some messages of a practical and political character, one of which was the command to found a new religious order, which resulted in the establishment of the Order of the Most ...

The Revelations of Saint Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden (circa 1303–73) is one of the most important and influential works of Swedish medieval literature. According to contemporary sources, Birgitta received her revelations in the form of visions, beginning in the 1340s and continuing until close to her death. Although her revelations related mostly to spiritual matters, they included some messages of a practical and political character, one of which was the command to found a new religious order, which resulted in the establishment of the Order of the Most ...

This engraved map of Lake Mälaren is the only extant copy of one of the first maps printed in Sweden. It was drafted by Andreas Bureus in 1614 and is regarded as a forerunner to his map of the Nordic countries of 1626. It has a dedication in Latin from Bureus to his patron Jacob van Dijk: “This small map I bequeath in the stead of a map of the whole world; I shall provide you an engraved map of the entire northern reaches of the world at a subsequent ...

Andreas Bureus (1571–1646) is known as the father of Swedish cartography. He embarked upon a career in the Royal Chancellery in 1602 and was entrusted with several important missions in the service of the state. In 1628 he was assigned the task of founding what was to become the Swedish National Land Survey. In 1624 he was made a member of the Swedish nobility with the name Anders Bure. Bureus completed this map of the Nordic countries in 1626 after several years of collecting data. It was printed on ...

The 1510 manuscript Jungfru Marie örtagård (The Garden of the Virgin Mary) is the work of an anonymous nun at the Brigittine monastery at Vadstena in eastern Götaland, Sweden, and is the sole surviving source for the Swedish psalms, collects and lessons, hymns, and commentaries used in daily office by the nuns at the monastery. From the late 14th century to about 1530, the Vadstena monastery contributed significantly to the development of a nascent Swedish cultural identity, largely through the language that developed and was taught there. Most of the ...

This photochrome print is from the “Views of Architecture and Other Sites in Copenhagen, Denmark” section of the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company. It depicts a ship entering the harbor at Helsingborg, Sweden, which, between 1874 and 1896, was connected to Copenhagen by regular ferry service. The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr. and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. They obtained the exclusive rights to use the Swiss "Photochrom" process for ...

This photochrome print of the popular Kungsparken (King’s Park) in Malmö is part of “Landscape and Marine Views of Norway and Sweden” from the catalog of the Detroit Photographic Company. The park was designed by the Danish architect O. Høegh Hansen, and opened in 1872. Hansen’s design reflected French and Austrian influences of the 1850s and evoked both the romantic and baroque styles. Malmö is located in southern Sweden, just across Oresund Strait from Denmark. The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the ...

This photochrome print of Malmo, Sweden is from the “Landscape and Marine Views of Norway” section in the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company, which also included six views of Sweden. The 1892 edition of Baedeker’s Norway, Sweden, and Denmark: Handbook for Travellers described Malmo as a “thriving seaport, the capital of the fertile province of Skåne, with 47,500 inhabitants” and informed its readers about “the pleasant promenades of Kung Oskars Park (café, with concerts frequently).” Malmo is located on the body of water known as the Sound ...

This photochrome print of the popular Kungsparken (King’s Park) in Malmö is part of “Landscape and Marine Views of Norway and Sweden” from the catalog of the Detroit Photographic Company. The park was designed by the Danish architect O. Høegh Hansen, and opened in 1872. Hansen’s design reflected French and Austrian influences of the 1850s and evoked both the romantic and baroque styles. As described by Baedeker’s Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden and Denmark: With Excursions to Iceland and Spitzbergen (1912), at the center of the park was a ...

This late 19th-century photochrome print offers a bucolic view of the open-air museum of Skansen on Djurgården Island, a royal park situated within Stockholm. Founded in 1891, Skansen is the oldest such heritage museum in Europe, with traditional Swedish culture and wildlife exhibits, as well as log structures such as the house and barn pictured on the other side of the pond. These buildings, most of which date from the 18th and 19th centuries, were intended to display Sweden's regional diversity and rural traditions at a time of rapid ...

This photochrome print of the Kungstradgarden (King’s Garden) in Stockholm, Sweden, is part of “Landscape and Marine Views of Norway and Sweden” from the catalog of the Detroit Photographic Company. The park is located west of the national cathedral and covers more than 3.5 hectares. It originally served, in the 15th century, as the king’s kitchen garden. Later it was transformed by the French designer Jean Allard into a park intended to achieve a balance between nature and urbanization. The park was opened to the public in ...

This photochrome print from the Detroit Publishing Company is a view of the General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm in 1897. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, industrialized countries organized large-scale international exhibitions to showcase their industrial and scientific achievements and to appeal to national pride at home. Such exhibitions were mounted in Paris in 1855, 1867, 1878, and 1889, Vienna in 1873, Philadelphia in 1876, and Chicago in 1893. The Stockholm exhibition was timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of King Oscar II’s accession ...

Erik Dahlberg´s Suecia antiqua et hodierna (Sweden ancient and modern) is the most renowned architectural and topographical documentation of Sweden during the age of imperial greatness. Dahlberg was an accomplished civil servant and draftsman. Aided by assistants under his aegis, he drafted a large number of sketches and drawings depicting settlements, manors, and fortifications, with the expressed purpose of enhancing the glory of Sweden in its efforts to be recognized as a European power. The drawings were later engraved by a number of leading contemporary European engravers. The first ...

The Carta marina of the Swedish geographer and historian Olaus Magnus is one of the earliest accurate cartographic depictions of the Scandinavian peninsula. Drafted in Rome in 1539, by one of the more prominent Scandinavian Catholics in higher ecclesiastical service, it contains detail that is lacking in many other early maps of the region. Originally intended for his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (A description of the Nordic peoples), the map was published some 15 years before the appearance of this majestic work. Olaus Magnus is generally regarded as the first ...

Significant works of young scholars at times can have great impact on the scholarly community, but remain relatively unknown for a broader public. The early works of Carl Linné (1707-78), annotated journals of his travels in Sweden and abroad, in which he laid the foundation for his efforts to devise a nomenclature for natural genera and species, were never published during his lifetime. The account of his travels in Lapland was published in English in 1811. The notes of his early travels in Bergslagen, Dalarna, and abroad were edited and ...

This immigration handbook was published by the Canadian Department of Interior in 1889 for the express purpose of recruiting settlers from Sweden. It includes an introduction to Canada and Canadian society, an immigration procedures handbook, and a topographical description of Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. Special attention is paid to already-existing Scandinavian settlements.

Heinrich Neuhaus (1833–87) was a German-born map maker and lithographer who worked in Sweden for many years. His largest and best-known work is this panoramic map of Stockholm, which he created in the 1870s using an oblique image in isometric perspective. The buildings on the map are depicted with remarkable accuracy. Neuhaus is reported to have said that in order to produce the map, he walked through every neighborhood of the city and sketched the exterior of its buildings and other structures. The map captures the rapid growth of ...

For centuries, Lapland has allured wayfarers and dazzled them with its magical geography and intrinsic cultural topography: the social environment of the indigenous Sami people, its rich and varied fauna, its seemingly endless natural resources, and the midnight sun. Field scientists, missionaries, tourists, or those simply driven by curiosity have, each for their own reasons, found their way to what is perhaps Europe’s last wilderness. This 1904 tourist poster by the Royal Administration of the Swedish State Railways advertises an express train to Lapland that ran from Stockholm, Sweden ...

In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. The Åland Islands is Number 48 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. These islands are an archipelago of more than 300 habitable islands (out of more than 6,000 rocky ...